


Fullmetal Alchemist Sketchbook

by evil_whimsey



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Multi, Other, Sketches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-09-16
Updated: 2011-10-23
Packaged: 2017-10-11 21:39:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/117397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_whimsey/pseuds/evil_whimsey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since all my FMA seems to be prompt-drabbles and ficbits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Flimsy (Roy & Ed)

Ed had to wonder how long Mustang was going to keep up the pretense that he wasn't interested. At this point he was so transparent it bordered on ridiculous, but Mustang just kept plugging doggedly ahead with his act.

It was fascinating, in a bizarre way. And since Ed had nothing better to do, he just kept watching.

He thinks Mustang's finally hit his limit, when they wind up out on the ass-end of nowhere, sneaking into an abandoned barn to escape a sudden thunderstorm. The whole setup is so ludicrously perfect, Ed could laugh himself sick. But Mustang is still taking this seriously, and maybe out of respect for the man's tolerances--they're surprisingly narrow, Ed has discovered--and the fact that he'd rather have Mustang's company than not, he keeps playing along.

Thunder booms outside, and Ed makes a cursory inspection of their shelter.  
"Looks like a good wind would blow this place down," he notes. "But if we stay under the hayloft, we'll be dry at least."  
He turns to get Mustang's vote, and catches him pulling off his uniform coat and shaking it out.

Mustang flicks him a sidelong look. "It got wet."

"I didn't say anything," Ed shrugs, and looks back to the rafters so Mustang won't see him biting the inside of his cheek.

"The storm is bound to pass soon," Mustang points out, wandering in the general direction of Ed, who was kicking an old wooden crate to roust any dormant mice before taking a seat.  
 _Not with your luck_ , Ed doesn't say.

Mustang finds a nail to hang his coat on--fussy bastard--and then takes ages unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves. The rain comes, in a sudden torrent, pinging like marbles off the tin patches in the roof.

Ed pretends to watch the drops hitting the dusty floor, while Mustang hovers and fidgets, and finally sinks down on the crate with his back to Ed, trying to look nonchalant, even though his ass is barely resting on the edge.

Ed fights the urge to snicker, and the stronger urge to tell Mustang to relax, it's just a cliche. It happens to everyone.


	2. Shift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roy & Ed

Over the years, Roy had become reasonably adept at reading Fullmetal's handwritten reports. They were chickenscratch, true, but Roy could pick out roughly sixty percent of the words, and infer the rest from context, guesswork, or in some cases pure invention.  
When Furey hit on the most obvious solution, everyone wondered why they hadn't thought of it years ago. It was perfect, in theory.

However in actual practice, it was something else. Fullmetal's typing *looked* like language. It looked for all the world like it ought to make sense, and Roy's brain tried valiantly, every time, to construe something comprehensible out of it. Right up to the point he gave himself a splitting headache over " **...;osT at tRaib! xCRpssi*ng Swi9t;ched traiNs hJa;lf way bacL..**."

"Have you considered slowing down, Fullmetal?" he asked weakly, and the young man bristled.  
"Hey! You try working that stupid contraption with one metal hand, dickhead! See you do any better."

Roy sighed and gifted him with one of the office pens.


	3. Grace, Cadence, Echo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Olivier Armstrong, Alphonse Elric, Pinako Rockbell, respectively

**Grace**

 

When she is fourteen years old, her mother enrolls her in a private, highly exclusive boarding school for girls; Olivier Armstrong would never directly address her mother again, after this.

After a ten day reign of terror over every class--from dancing to charm, to elocution and needlepoint--Olivier decamps from St. Agnes's with her jaw set and her back as straight as the wrought iron gates out front.

She gets herself North, marches into the Admissions office of the harshest, strictest military school in Amestrian history, and demands they enroll her.  
(Never, the grizzled veteran headmaster would admit later, had he seen such a bloodthirsty campaign executed with such poise.)

 

**

 

**Cadence**

 

Back when he was sealed in the armor, Al had a brief secret love affair with Major Hughes's gramophone. He would wind it up on a military march, or anything with full orchestra and plenty of boom to it, and sit as close as he could to the horn, for hours.

Ed gave him funny looks, wondered aloud when he'd become a music fan; Al never admitted that when the drums rattled the armor, the rhythm of it was almost like having a heartbeat.

**

**Echo**

 

When Pinako's only daughter went off to salvage whom she could from that wretched mess in Ishval, Pinako was left with a business to run and a child to look after, and suddenly her life was exactly what it had been some twenty years back.

When she found the note from her granddaughter, gone to help the Elric boys salvage what they could of their own wretched mess, Pinako sat a long time staring at it, for the first time wondering what it might be like to live out her twilight years alone.

Because when you've lived as long as she has, you see how things always come back around.

 

*****


	4. Diminish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ed & Roy. From a prompt-swap with pandoraculpa.  
> Original prompt: "He had expected Ed to appear diminished by the lack of his arm, but one glance at those hawklike eyes left him uncomfortably certain that he was going to regret this call."

Roy knew he'd best keep alert, not get distracted by the broken symmetry of Ed's shape (or the unease it produced in him for any number of reasons). But Ed was sharp today, and must have caught something in Roy's countenance anyway, because he paused, left hand on the arm of the chair, halfway to sitting and said, "Don't worry. The other guy looked worse."

Truth was, the 'other guy' was dead, and Ed had been nearly so when they'd found him. Roy averted his eyes to his desk, with the feeling he'd just had his hand slapped. "I understand your mechanic is on her way to town. Are there any--ah--accommodations you need until the repairs are done?"

Ed shook his head and snorted. "Not unless you want to lend me a bodyguard for when she shows up. I barely have a chance against her with two fuckin' arms, and she's really gonna let me have it for losing all the hardware."

"I could speak to Major Armstrong. I'm sure he'd be able to accompany you." Because it would cross their unspoken boundary, if Roy apologized for the loss of the automail, and they'd already fought over the fact that Ed had been dragged unconscious from a lake, during a storm, and the whereabouts of his arm had been the least of anyone's worries at that point.

What Roy _could_ do, under the terms of their truce, was indulge in dark humor. Which Ed apparently appreciated. He cocked an eyebrow at the old joke, and even mustered a bent smirk.

"No good. He respects women too much. You can't make that mistake with Winry, or she'll get you by the throat."  
Ed was only ever this fatalistic about his automail mechanic, and it amused Roy a tiny bit, every time. "I never guessed Miss Rockbell would grow up to be so formidable."

"I think psychotic is the word you want."  
Roy hid his smile behind his glove, wiped it off and down his chin and tried for elaborate disinterest.  
"Hm. Well I suppose I could find the time to accompany you. I'd have to check my schedule with Lieutenant Hawkeye, of course."

"What are you gonna do? Stand around with popcorn while she whales on me?"  
"It's been slow around Headquarters," Roy said. "One has to take diversions as they come."

 

*****


	5. Please,  Portion, Trade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mostly Ed-centric

**Please**

 

Nice gestures confused the hell out of Mustang. Ed had made a thorough study of the phenomenon.

He quit slamming doors around the office, and the Colonel's cringe reflex took a week to catch up. He substituted 'Please' and 'No thanks', for 'Whatever', and 'You fucking wish'. Mustang tilted to a funny angle, sat speechless. Ed snickered into his sleeve for hours.

Mustang worked late nights by the light of one puny lamp on his desk, until Ed found him a better one.

"Dare I ask how you got this?"  
"What? It was legal," Ed shrugged. "Want some more coffee?"

 

**

 

**Portion**

 

Edward Elric is eating for two. And sleeping for two, and breathing for two, and growing half as much as he should at this age because half his growth is steadily siphoning off somewhere else.

It's not just that every thought, every consideration, every action of his life is made on the balance of his brother's soul; his brother's body is *somewhere*, and thanks to that blood seal on the armor--Ed's blood on Al's vessel--Ed's body is taking up the slack too.

 

**

**Trade**

 

Days fade into nights into days, and the walls rolling past his wheelchair. His eyes and ears deliver long-distance messages, through a hiss of nothingness, drowning out voices, drowning out time.

He's caught by accident, in this weightless place between being and extinction, but it seems there's nowhere else to go.

His body is less than before, and somewhere past the veil of shock, he suspects his knowledge is more, much more than it should be. He feels it sometimes, stirring uneasily. Not a true part of him but forced in anyway, muttering secrets he can almost make out.

**


	6. Puff

"So how good is your control?" Ed asked one afternoon, chin resting on his knuckles, giving Roy a speculative stare.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Al's really good at fixing stuff like radios, with alchemy. He's got the control to handle all those little parts inside. And I've been doing some practicing, see." Ed digs in his pocket, brings out a fistful of spare screws, and lays them on Roy's desk.  
"--what--?"

"Check this out," Ed grins.

He claps his hands, lays them on the desk, and frowns in concentration. The alchemical reaction crackles and sparks, for almost a minute, while Roy worries vaguely about scorchmarks on his desk.

"There!" Ed pulls his hands back, and on Roy's desk sits a fantastically baroque pocketwatch.  
"Well go ahead, wind it up," says Ed.

Of course Roy is curious. He can't help it. This level of refinement is practically unheard of.  
The watch winds, and it ticks (Roy doesn't ask what the extra hands are for), and Ed's grin is all teeth.

"So, how good are you, with the fire?"

 

*****


End file.
